


Sister True

by Chair_Meow



Category: Black Dagger Brotherhood - J. R. Ward, The Fallen Angels - J.R. Ward
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angels, Best Friends, Brother-Sister Relationships, Brotherhood, Demons, Dysfunctional Family, Dysfunctional Relationships, Family, Multi, Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-02
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-14 07:47:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9169285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chair_Meow/pseuds/Chair_Meow
Summary: Amanda Savage had never been much of a religious person. God and faith didn't always make sense when you grew up in the New York foster system. She'd put all of that behind her though. She'd figured out a way to move on with her life, be someone else, be capable and strong. She'd moved to Caldwell, tried to get start fresh and then she'd...nearly died. She could have probably gotten over the whole miraculously alive thing, but the rest--well, she can barely wrap her mind around her new reality. Vampires, an angel, deities she'd never heard of, war, good and evil. And the Brothers she never knew she had.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Characters belong to J.R. Ward. Artistic liberties have been taken, new characters have been developed for the purpose of entertainment. This work is related to previously published Lover Found.

          The angel Lassiter had planned his day carefully.

          He wanted to do absolutely nothing.

          From the haggard comfort of his shitty mattress in his crash pad no one knew about, he wanted to do nothing but stare at the peeling wallpaper and simply exist.

          For just a few hours, he wanted to put the chaos of his so-called life behind him and convince himself that maybe this post-death reality wasn’t the most fucked up thing that could have happened to him. And you didn’t get to be an angel unless your life hadn’t been dumpster fire to begin with.

          Just for a little while he wanted to forget about the Black Dagger Brotherhood.

          The Omega.

           The missing Scribe Virgin.

           The war between vampires and lesser.

            Heaven.

            Hell.

            Angels and demons.

            GOD.

            He wanted all of it behind him and as far away from his mind as he could manage. He wanted a day off.

            Being an angel, though—being Lassiter—meant he’d never see such day.

            There was a dog in front of him. A mutt with some clear pit bull. It had that thick head and weird spots. It would have been a cute little thing if Lassiter didn’t know better than most what dogs truly were.

            “Sure, I’m not worthy of your time any other day of my eternal existence but the one day I decide to take a vacation you just show up, huh?” He grumbled as he rolled off the mattress after the damn dog pawed at his chest for the hundredth time.

            He walked to the door of the shack he was currently attempting to hide in and threw it open. It rattled the entire foundation. “Go away.”

            The animal didn’t budge, just cocked his head from side to side and whined.

            “What’s your problem? You have thousands of other assholes to go pester. Why do you make it your daily goal to remind me I’m the only one you can’t fucking stand?”

            He rubbed his eyes, frustration growing in his body as much as his heart. He wanted to get out of here, but he also knew there was no where in the world he could go where this dog wouldn’t find him.

            “Fine,” Lassiter grumbled when the animal didn’t budge. “Let’s get this bullshit over with.”

            He should have been a little more amiable about the whole thing, because the dog didn’t take any pity on him when he ghosted them both to the front door of a ranch-style house. At three in the morning, the residential neighborhood was quiet, only the front lights were on in a handful of houses. It wasn’t anything special, a non-distinct welcome mat and an empty driveway.

            Lassiter glanced down at the dog, his stomach still reeling from the ghosting.

“You thinking about remodeling? Suburbia is your thing now? That’s where you spend your time off these days?”

            The dog pawed at the door, whining as his nails scrapped the hard surface. The animal shuffled back and forth, nosing the door and pawing at it relentlessly.

            “Fuck.” Lassiter grabbed the door handle and ripped the whole things clear off the frame. He’d apologize later—if necessary.

            The small place was clean and organized, maybe a little sparse. It smelled of rosemary and lemons cleaners. Lassiter would have liked spending time in a place like this if something weren’t so obviously wrong.

            The air was thick with pain. So much suffering clogging his senses. His blood started to turn to sludge as he looked around the small, clean space. Nothing appeared to be out of order.

            The dog grabbed ahold of the leg of his leather pants, tugging on it with a growl. When Lassiter looked down, the animal let go and dashed to an open door way just down a short hall. He followed, knowing that whatever was waiting for him was certain to ruin his day.

            Nothing good had ever come from following Dog.

            He prepared himself for blood, lots of it. Dismemberment. Organs hanging from light fixtures. He thought made an elderly man, dead for several days now and bloated.

            Lassiter had not been expecting her, though.

            Young, pale, so small she barely made a dent on the mattress. She was so painfully thin that all her skin hung from her bones, her joints sticking out from her body. He was at her side faster than he thought possible, touching her cold skin, wanting to cry at the smell of sweat and pending death that clung to her.

            He had no clue how long she’d been where she was. The sheets were strewn every where, like she’d tossed and turned for hours. There was a glass of water knocked over and still dripping down the bedside table to the floor. She was still breathing, but there was no strength left in her.

            The dog jumped up on the bed, nosing her throat. He whined and burrowed his face against her.

            Lassiter pushed him away.

            “Do something, damnit!”

            Why bring him all the way here just to what a stranger die? Why not do something? He had the power so why cry instead of helping her?

            He gathered the girl up in his arms, a tear slipping down the bridge of his nose when her head dropped back, exposing her throat.

            And her teeth…

            Canines. Long, white, and sharp.

            “Fuck!” He morphed his teeth into canines, shredding at his wrist before shoving it against her mouth. She didn’t latch on to him as he’d seen vamps do to one another before. She didn’t even respond.

What were the fucking odds that Dog would bring him to the doorstep of a vampire? And only to let her die?

            He looked at the dog. “You know everything! Get us to Harvers. Now!”

            In a blink of an eye, he stood in front of the building that led to the vampire doctor’s clinic. The dog was nowhere to be seen.

            Lassiter juggled the girl in his arms, banging and kicking on the door. “HELP!”

            He turned his face up to the camera, hoping that someone would recognize him and let him in. Harvers took precautions but Lassiter had been here often enough with the Brothers.

            He looked down at the girl, still unresponsive even though her mouth was overflowing with angelic blood.

            The door opened. The doctor himself stood there with his tortoise shell glasses and lab coat. He paled at the sight of the girl, but Lassiter had to compliment him in the way the vampire reacted in the bat of an eye.

            He moved forward, reaching for her pulse. He tipped her head back and she coughed as the blood drained down her throat. “Come inside.”

            Lassiter followed him into the elevator, his eyes focused on the way his blood ran out of his veins and into her mouth.

            “What’s wrong with her?” He heard himself ask as too many nurses surrounded him, their hands trying to get her out his hold.

            “She’s going through her transition.”

            “Can you help her?”

            “Please let go of her, sir,” Harvers said as he tried to pull the girl from his arms. “Please, sir.”         

            He didn’t want to. His blood was strong, it was the only thing he had to thank God for and if any one could help her, it was him.

            “If she’s going to live, you need to let go of her.”

            He deposited her on a hospital bed, having to juggle her body and his wrist as he did so. He watched as the nurses descended on her as he moved back, scissors in their hands as they cut through her clothes and draped warm blankets over her body. They attached monitors to her skinny arms and bags of blood were rolled in the room even as Harvers tipped her head back and intubated her.

            The room was full of vampires, and each of them kept pushing him back until he was out of the room. The door closed in front of him before he could stop it.

            He nearly collapsed to the floor, catching himself against a wall. He’d underestimated how much blood he’d given her.

Too much.

            Contrary to what he’d told everyone, he could be killed.

            He could die.

            And as Lassiter stood in the clinic’s hallway, staring at a white door that felt miles away, he wondered if this was his final sacrifice. If Dog had taken him to that house with the sole purpose of watching him give what little of himself he had left.

            Giving his blood and existence for a total stranger.

            He slid down the wall, his eyes going to the bright lights above him. It would have been funny, Lassiter decided, except that he wasn’t sure if she was going to live or die so he didn’t want to go just yet. He hoped he wouldn’t have to go just yet.

            That was when he faded away.


	2. Chapter Two

To Butch O’Neil, evenings spent at the King’s back at the Assembly House were always enlightening. It gave him a chance to see Wrath as their people saw him, the future of the race. Blind justice, as it were.

  
Sometimes he forgot about that part, when they were at home and he was just another Brother, shooting the breeze with the rest of them over Last Meal, his kid on his lap and his wife by his side.

  
Butch rolled his Cadillac SUV to a stop in front of the main house at the compound, relieved to be back early. It meant that he got to spend a few more hours with Marissa, if he was lucky.

  
He jumped out of the driver’s seat as Wrath opened his own door and then the back door to let George out. The dog panted up to his master. George was always well-behaved but car rides were the only time when he truly acted like a dog. Butch was always happy to roll the window down and let the pooch do his thing.

  
“You should work on offspring, you know. Keep our lineage going, true?” Wrath said with a chuckle as he started to climb the stairs with George at his side. He’d been going on and on about young all through their return. Diapers, toys, and college tuition.

  
“Man, it still feels too soon to remind you of what a fucking wreck you were when your shellan got pregnant,” Butch replied. He paused and looked at the king. “My liege.”

  
Wrath laughed as the doors opened and they stepped in to the gilded foyer. The kaleidoscope of colors was always a welcomed sight. They were home.

  
“I’m just saying. Not enough kids inside of this house,” Wrath told him even as a loud coo came from up the grand stairs. Looking up, Butch smiled as the Queen came down the stairs with a baby on her hip.

  
Beth Randall had come a long way. In her designer jeans and her oversized cashmere sweater and that beautiful black hair flowing down her back, she was every bit the woman he remembered and the woman he had always known she could be. Just look at the love that shone out of her eyes when ever she looked at Wrath. And that kid…

  
“Just ‘cause fatherhood suits ya, it don’t mean the rest of us want the same,” Butch said as he beat the King to the stairs and swipped the baby from his mahmen before his father could. He buried his face into L.W.’s neck and nuzzled and kissed the baby until he snorted with laughter. There was no better sound than that kid’s laugh. Especially when he threw his little arms around Butch’s neck held on tight.

  
“Butch, I was trying to get him to sleep,” Beth grumbled as her son was handed back to her upside down. The baby was still laughing as she turned him back in the right direction. The Brothers were always handling him like he was a sack of potatoes.

  
“He doesn’t need sleep. He’s deadly enough without it,” Butch chuckled as he watched the King wrap his arms around his queen and kiss her senseless. He wanted to be doing the same thing with his own female. “I’m gonna hit the gym before Last Meal. Call me if you need—“

  
“Butch.”

  
He turned in time to see Manny coming out of the TV room, a medical file in his hands. He was used to seeing his brother like. Damn near expected Manny to always be in scrubs, too. It was fucking scary how that worked. Just a few years later and Butch damn near felt Manny’s presence like he felt Marissa and V.

  
“Hey, man, what’s—“

  
“We need to talk. Wrath, too.”

  
That got the King’s attention. He wasn’t used to the doctor asking for an audience. Fuck, the last time the three of them talked, just them, had been years ago. Right when they’d discovered Butch and Manny were brothers to be exact. It had felt right to sit down the three of them and talk about where they might have come from.

  
The King’s face was unreadable as he followed the noises being made around him. Butch had a theory that although Wrath’s eyes didn’t work, the King saw things none of them did. He was probably picking up on all sorts of weird things right now.

  
“Come on,” he took Beth’s hand in his and led them up the stairs. Anywhere the King went, his queen was always invited. They walked together his study, that borderline feminine room from where he ruled with an iron fist.

  
Butch kept on eye on the First Couple and the other on his brother. The male wasn’t having a good time judging by the scent of stress coming off of him. He was usually a cool headed guy, his Manny, capable of keeping his shit together when someone was bleeding like a stuck pig or when his powerhouse of a shellan was on a war path against lessers. He was rock solid.

  
Most of the time.

  
The door clicked shut behind them and Manny lifted the medical file in his hand. “Harvers called while you were out. There was a female brought into the clinic three days ago. She was going through her transition. He has no clue how she got there. Bits and pieces of his memory—and the staff’s—is missing. He just knows that she appeared, unresponsive and near dead. If she hadn’t made it there right when she did, she’d be dead.”

  
Butch looked from his brother to his King and then Beth. Wrath was in the process of sitting down. “It’s not uncommon for our kind to pass in transition under the wrong circumstances. It’s the reality of our kind.”

  
“Wrath, she thinks she’s human. One hundred percent convinced that she’s human.”

  
The words hung in the air for what felt like years. Manny had never gone through transition, but Butch, Beth and Wrath had suffered painfully through theirs. Some times he had nightmares about it. Vishous had gotten him through his ancestor regression and that shit had been rough. And Beth…if it hadn’t been for Wrath, Beth would have surely died in transition. No one but her father, Darius, had had a clue that she vampire-born.

  
“She doesn’t know who she is?” Beth asked from the safety of Wrath’s lap. She was holding L.W. tight to her chest. Grounding herself with her child. “Amnesia or what?”

  
Fuck, didn’t they just know exactly how that felt, too.

  
She understood better than they did just how frightening the new world could be.

  
Manny walked to Beth, the file extended to her. He didn’t meet the queen’s eyes as he rubbed exhaustion and weariness from his face. “She knows who she is. Her name is Amanda. Amanda Savage. She told him that when she woke up. She’s twenty-five. She grew up in the Bronx but moved to Caldwell seven months ago. She’s a seamstress. Harvers was going to call Marissa at Safe Place, but he was waiting for the results to come in. As far as she knows, she’s human.”

  
Butch desperately wanted to see what Beth was looking at, because the queen’s eyes had gone wide and her gaze had lifted up to his brother in complete disbelief.

  
“Read it to me, Beth. What ever it is, we can handle it, true? Is she Darius’ daughter, too? Is that why Harvers sent the file over?” Wrath asked, his tone hurried and worried. The file was less than two feet away from his face but he could see nothing.

  
The queen shook her head. “It’s not me, Wrath. She’s not of my father’s line.”

  
Butch looked from the queen to his brother, who for the first time met his eyes. Hazel held brown as Beth said, “Harvers sent the file over because her DNA traced her as a daughter of the line of Wrath.”

  
His heart thundered in his chest as the words sorted out inside of his thick skull. “What?”

  
“He ran the tests five times. Harvers wanted to be sure. There were enough DNA similarities for both of you that he—“ Manny shook his head, clearing his thoughts. “We have a sister.”

 

X

 

“SIT DOWN!” Wrath roared, and the whole study shook at the sound of his voice.

  
Butch was actually glad that Wrath had taken charge because he wasn’t sure what direction he’d been walking anyway. He’d bumped in the corner of the King’s desk in a hurry to get the file, then he’d topped over an armchair. He didn’t have Manny’s medical training but he’d seen enough lab reports in his days as a cop that he knew how to figure that shit out.

  
He’d first considered getting in his SUV and going to Harvers, but maybe he needed to have Marissa at his side first, and V, too.

  
He knew all about surprise sisters.

  
Butch sunk to the chaise in the corner of the room, aware that Manny was sitting on the other side.

  
A sister.

  
It had been ridiculous to find a brother in this world. Hard enough to connect with Manny in the midst of all the madness and the war, but a girl….  
A female. She’d gone through her transition alone. Probably scared out of her damn mind. Someone who like him and Manny most likely hadn’t had a clue of what the world was really like before their rude awakening. He had Beth to thank for that and Manny had Jane, but what about this girl?

  
“We need to go,” he heard himself say as he tried to stand up. Manny pulled him back down again. “Let’s g—“

  
“We can't just barge in there.”

  
“Neither of you is leaving this house until Vishous’s done a full background check on her,” Wrath cut in. He had stood up from behind his desk and come around to stand in front of Butch.

  
“What does it matter at this point? She’s our sister. That’s what that file says, twenty-five percent related. Half siblings. She’s of your line.”

  
“You’re not going anywhere until we have all the information on her that we can collect. If she’s your sister, if she’s a descendent of kings, we need to know more about her and where she’s coming from. She might be a way to find your father.”

  
“Fuck him! She’s out there alone. She thinks she’s HUMAN!”

  
“And what’s your plan? Just storm the castle and bring her here? Surround her with vampires and expect her to leave her whole life behind her?” Wrath argued.

  
“She’s my sister!”

  
Damn it, hadn’t it been bad enough that he’d already lost one? Janie’d slipped right through his fingers and now they expected him to let this one go too? What had her life been before this? Who was she leaving behind?

  
His skin itched. He wanted to see this girl. Hear her voice. He wanted to make sure for himself that she had transitioned well.

  
“Give us a moment,” Wrath said as he gave Manny and Beth a look.

  
Neither of them argued and Butch had the distinct impression that his brother was happy to get the fuck out of there. Manny had been an only child until Butch had come into his life, already full grown and independent. Hell, the two of them had the kind of relationship he didn't think was even possible amongst siblings. 

Wrath dropped to the seat next to him, his elbows on his knees. His hair was long enough that it could have touched the floor if the King tipped his head in the right angle.

  
“I know all about your past, cop. You didn’t make it this far just on V and Beth’s word, got it? I heard it all. I know about the sister you lost and I know you’re not feeling too relieved by these news right now, yeah?”

  
Butch wanted to tell the King to go fuck himself, but it wouldn’t have been the right thing to do under these circumstances.

  
Wrath didn’t know shit. His family was all perfectly safe around him. Butch’s family on the other hand…God damn it, just when he thought he’d gotten over it, when he had crossed a hurdle and learned from it, some new shit came up.

  
“If she thinks she’s human, if she truly doesn’t know anything about us, can you imagine how scared she’ll be when someone who looks like us walks into her life? We don’t know were she’s coming from. What her history is and if she has any family? ”

  
“You want me to just sit here and wait? She nearly died! Obviously whatever family she has doesn’t give a fuck if they left her alone at the clinic.”

  
“I want you to be realistic. You of all people, you know what it’s like to have reality shock you silly. Give Vishous a chance to find us a way to help her. Please.”

  
The King seldom asked for something quite that nicely. Butch knew that better than most.

  
“I have so many questions. V and his computers can’t answer them all.”

  
“So the rest us will help you. Have faith in us.”


	3. Chapter 3

The fucking pain. Jesus, you couldn’t make that shit up.

            It was worse than anything she’d ever felt before and she was an old friend to pain. Brittle, easily breakable bones, bloody noses, daily migraines, asthma, atrophied muscles, gastro-intestinal issues. You name it--she’d had it.

This body her mind was currently residing in didn’t feel like she’d been cute and cuddly with death just a few days ago. She felt…

            This body was a stranger to her in more ways than Amanda Savage could count. The eyes felt wrong, primarily because they were functioning when they hadn’t worked well ever before. The muscles in her legs and arms and everywhere else in her body didn’t ache that awful cramping ache she could have sworn she’d been born with. They looked and felt strong, rounder and fuller. She’d never been capable of doing much, but she felt capable. She couldn’t even see the bones in her arms, like she had seen for years.

She wanted a mirror. She needed to check and see what had become of her body. There had been so many things wrong with her body all of her life that the doctors she’d seen had told her case worker to wrap her in bubble wrap and hope for the best.

            Growing up in her body had made her used to brittle bones, bloody noses, and weekly migraines. She was used to visiting clinics and hoping for answers and calling in sick to work and being fired when her traitorous mortal prison gave out only hours after she’d woken up.

            She was used to nights spent in hospitals, loneliness, uncertainty, and harshness. To fear that death would come in the middle of the night…or worse, never come at all. There were times she’d been ready to go, to give up and put the mortal plane behind her. Fuck, her body and her mind had been exhausted twenty years ago and she’d been living off fumes for long enough.

            Yet none of the things she’d faced in her short twenty-five years had prepared her for the pain she had experienced only days ago.

            She’d been prepared for death, had even thought that it would cancer or heart failure or a brain aneurysm. With her luck and medical history, Amanda had always thought that the end would be painful and bitter.

           Whatever had happened to her four days ago, whatever the _fuck_ that had been, she hoped to God she’d never have to go through that shit again.

           Or maybe…

           She’d go through it all again if it meant she could go back to being a sane human being. She’d made it this far with her faulty plumbing but it felt like a fucking sick joke that her wiring was starting to show defects too.

           She’d woken up in a comfortable hospital bed, if such thing were possible. There had been monitors attached to her body and a handful of really sweet nurses who helped her stand up and helped her bathe. She’d needed it if her memories served her right. One of them had even brushed her hair. Just yesterday one of them had brought her some fancy yoga pants, a comfortable sweatshirt and some slippers with the Boston Red Sox logo on it. They’d all looked too big but had fit perfectly in the end.

           The clothes had been nice, but it was the food that made her day.

           It had been years, maybe seventeen, since she’d eaten without getting sick to her stomach. At first they had thought she was allergic to gluten or dairy or a million other things, but in the end anything and everything had sent her running to empty out her stomach. That beautiful blend of ginger and rice had been the first thing in forever that made her feel comfortable.

           Amanda had been thankful for those nurses until they had turned crazy. They’d let the whack job doctor near her and that’s when all things had really gone to hell.

           Sure, she’d just gone through some nerve wrecking shit but he didn’t seem very concerned about that. Him and his flashlight were more concerned about asking her about her mom, her dad, where she’d grown up, and did she have any vampiric roots she’d like to share with him.

           Motherfucker was off his glorious rocker.

           She’d been too busy inwardly laughing at him to even listen to what he had to say and boy hadn’t that just frustrated the hell out of the man.   

           He’d given up after she’d asked to see him medical diploma and if he had a shrink who he saw regularly to help him deal with the stress of his job.

Havers the Helpful hadn’t been back since and her nurses had changed their tunes, too. They were cautious when they stepped into the room, not meeting her eyes and bowing their heads as if she were some sort of royalty. Amanda had a handful of talents she could boast of, but tolerance for ridiculousness wasn’t one of them.

She began pacing again, marveling at the way her body could move now. One foot in front of the other, muscles stretching, joints bending. She’d bet good money that she could touch her toes, not that she was going to try given the fact that this body felt brand new and she didn’t want to break it quite yet.

Maybe what Havers the Helpful had really done was take her consciousness and transplanted that into a body that some similar features to her previous one but was in all honest bionic.

She could easily believe that tale faster than she could wrap her mind around vampires.

A knock sounded at the door and Amanda looked up from her pristine white walls to see the world’s most beautiful woman peak her head in. Her smile was kind and inquisitive as she acted as if she weren’t Gisele Bundchen, Grace Kelly, and Charlize Theron all wrapped up in one person. “May I come in?”

“Yeeeeeeeeeaaaah.”

The woman came in, momentarily waving at someone behind her before she shut the door. She was tall, clearing six feet, thin, beautifully pale and blond and blue eyed. She stood perched on Tory Burch flats, sporting some nice bling around her throat and on her ears. Perfectly graceful and put together and with a serene smile that wasn’t the least bit fake.

“My name is Marissa. And you must be Amanda,” she said with a lightly accented voice. European, maybe. Polished just like the rest of her. She offered a hand.

“I am.” The skin contrast was shocking. This lady probably used SPF 75 and a hat every time she stepped out into the sun. There wasn’t a single centimeter of her skin that wasn’t flawless.

“It’s nice to meet you. How are you feeling?”

Feeling like she was teetering at the edge of the Twilight Zone. “Well, thank you. Hoping to go home soon.”

Marissa the Beautiful smiled a breathtakingly beautiful smile. “That’s why I’m here actually.”

“That’s great. So I’ve been cleared by Havers the Helpful? The lab results are in? He’s certified crazy and I can go?”

The woman laughed and even that was beautiful. “Havers can be difficult sometimes, can’t he? Believe it or not, his bedside manners used to be much worse.”

“Lady, it’s not side bedside manners that has me wanting to sprint out of here, alright?” She began to pace again. She needed movement, an out, and a mirror.

“We’ll get to that soon, but first I wanted to go over some of the things you told him.” She took a seat the armchair across from the bed and Amanda frowned at the way she seemed to relax.

“I told him right when I woke up that I didn’t have insurance. I can’t afford this place and he said that didn’t matter.”

She wasn’t completely broke but this place looked above anything she could afford.

“It doesn’t matter. We are happy to take care of you, any time,” Marissa said.

“So what’s this about?”

“Do you remember how you got here?”

“I don’t remember anything other than getting home and not being sure how to classify the pain.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t imagine how frightening it must have been to be alone at a time like this.”

“I’d like to say I’ve had worse, but this was a doozy.”

“When you first came in, Havers took your blood for test. You had no identification and we tried to I.D. through your blood work.”

“DNA can take up to weeks.”

“We don’t have a backlog and everything is done in house. We were just trying to find out who you were. Do you have any family that can take care of you after you leave here?”

Her tone was soft and gentle and Amanda didn’t believe one bit that she wasn’t fishing for the same answers Havers had been hoping for.

That was her talent: reading people.

“I’m sorry. I’m not in the habit of discussing my personal life with strangers. What exactly is your role here?”

Marissa smiled. “I’m a social worker.”

Figures, Amanda thought. Do gooders, well-wishers, hopefuls, until they realized how few resources they had and how little help. She knew the type, except none of hers had ever looked this glamorous.

“I’m twenty five years old. I’m a little old to be a concern of the state, aren’t I?”

“I just want to make sure that you’ll be well taken care of after this.”

That’s what they all said.

Amanda sat down at the foot of her bed. “I’m an orphan. My mom died when I was six years old. Heart problems. And then I went to live with my grandpa. He passed away when I was thirteen. I was a ward of the State of New York until I turned eighteen.”

“And your father?”

“Robert Savage. A talented cardiothoracic surgeon doing a sabbatical at the hospital she worked at. I don’t know much else about him. They were colleagues, maybe even friends, and one day he left the country and never came back.” She shrugged her shoulders, ‘cause it’d been a long time since she’d given a damn about her misfortune. “I take care of myself. My mom left me some money. Well, they both did. And I have a job.”

Or had. She’d been passed out for a few days and then she hadn’t called Mrs. Bransford when she’d woken up so there was no telling if she still had a place at the salon.

“Siblings?”

“My mom was forty-three when she had me and she was diagnosed with peripartum cardiomyopathy right after delivery, so no siblings on her side. Robert never said anything about children. Then again, I might have met him a handful of times.” Amanda paused, searching Marissa quiet expression. “Does that answer your questions? I’d like to go home now.”

That beautiful serene smile stayed in place. “The DNA results came with a match. Two, actually. We were able to locate a few of your family members.”

Amanda schooled her features to remain blank. She’d learn a long time ago that social workers were always looking for an in, some sort of weakness that they could use to get into their case’s head.

Marissa had found hers without even trying. What orphan didn’t want to find family? Specially one who remembered what it felt like to have someone, to have love and warmth and security. Her mother had been gone for a while, but she’d had her grandpa and he’d been so careful, so dedicated to taking care of her. He’d tried so hard.

All she’d wanted for so long after he’d passed away was to find someone to share her life with. She’d prayed and begged God for Robert to come back and to actually want to her dad.

She’d given up after a while. There were other things to put her energy into, like surviving.

            “Thank you,” she started as she stood up. “For taking the time to checking on me and to come speak to me. I appreciate it, honestly. You don’t know how much it means to me that everyone here would go out of their way to make sure I’m better. But I’d like to go now.”

            Marissa didn’t move. “Your brothers would like to meet you.”

            Amanda was shaking her head before she had even though things through. “Listen, I’m not really a show-and-tell kind of person, alright? I don’t want to be the one they take one glance at to satisfy their curiosity and then return to oblivion. So if it’s all the same to them, I’m good putting all this behind me.”

            Her body wanted to bolt for the door, to storm the gates and get the hell out of Dodge. Beyond the door, she could hear bodies shuffling. Why did her room have no windows? What kind of clinic was this? Was this lady taking the same drugs as Havers?

            “It’s not like that. They were happy to hear about you. It means a lot to them to have a sister. If you give them a chance, please.”

            “I don’t have a choice, do I?”

            Marissa was seated between her and the door. Havers hadn’t sent her here to check in on her but to make sure that Amanda would cave. They didn’t really leave her any room for escape. Marissa the Beautiful didn’t reply because she wasn’t about to lie.

            “Well, if I’m going to disappoint anyone, I rather expedite the process.”

            “Why don’t you take the day to think it over? It can’t be easy to hear all of this at once.”

            “I’m still processing Havers’ vampiric theory, so I think this is a great time to pile things on.”

            “Amanda, there’s no need to rush—“

            “They’re outside, aren’t they? You waved to them before coming in. If we’re going to do this, now’s the time.”

            Marissa stood up, all beauty and grace. She smoothed the fabric of her pants with her well-manicured hands. “I’ll go speak to them.”

            Amanda watched her walk out of the room, closing the door quietly behind her.

            By all accounts, this was the definition of a cluster fuck.

            Brothers. Leave it to Robert to sow his seed and never bother telling her or her mom. Wherever he was, she hoped he was satisfied with himself. Nothing like abandoning your kid and then continuously throwing curve balls into her life from wherever the hell he was. Back in Europe? Dead? Did her brothers know anything about his where abouts since she’d last seen him some fifteen years ago?

            Had he ever told them about her?

            Amanda steeled herself against their disappointment. No one wanted to inherit a sister that had even a third of the issues she had. It wasn’t exactly a dream scenario for some strangers.

            The door opened and she met them head on, refusing to show weakness.

            The first one in was wearing slacks and a button down. Expensive clothing, tailored to his tall frame. Black hair, smart eyes, strong jaw line. He had a quiet presence about him.

            The one behind him was in jeans, a leather jacket, and a Red Sox cap. He had to duck to come into the room. He was maybe six feet eight inches; by far the tallest person she’d ever seen. His presence wasn’t quiet; it was booming and all-encompassing. He kept his head down, but she knew that face.

            “Jesus H. Christ, you look just like him.”

 


	4. Chapter 4

            Butch had seen the pictures of girl.

            They’d broken into her little house, searched every inch of her place, pulled up every medical file, school report, foster system record, social security information, bank statement, parking ticket violation, and any and everything else that Vishous had been able to locate.

            The name on her birth certificate was Amanda Cardoso Savage. She was the daughter of Gloria Cardoso and Robert Savage. Her mother had been a talented, scratch that, brilliant, cardiothoracic surgeon in Manhattan. They’d lived in the Bronx because that’s where she’d been born and that was where her father kept a small tailoring business. She volunteered at a local clinic whenever she could. Gloria had the kind of rags to riches story that made eyes water. An immigrant’s kid, first generation American who’d fought her way up the ladder until the thing had no rungs left. She’d authored papers, invented procedures, and generally moved her field forward in ways that still benefited medicine decades after her death. She’d passed away from heart failure at the age of fifty years old. She’d been perfectly healthy until the delivery of her baby girl.

            Her father was Robert Savage, a visiting colleague from another hospital. They hadn’t found anything else about him other than the fact that some eighteen years ago he’d established a trust fund for Amanda before disappearing forever. There wasn’t even a picture of him on hospital file.

            As for Amanda…she hadn’t been entirely honest with Marissa. When her mother had passed away, the state had found her grandfather incompetent to properly care for a child her age. He’d been in his late seventies by then. Young Amanda had a bad habit of running away from her foster families to see him at his assisted living. When she’d been moved to a group home, she was known to disappear for days at a time. She didn’t make it easy for her caseworker to check in on her and her attitude wasn’t the brightest and most positive. She didn’t particularly care for authority. That piled on top of the world’s most depressing medical file Butch and Manny had ever seen made it nearly impossible for the kid to get adopted.

            The pictures they’d found of Amanda Savage showed a drastically underweight kid and young woman. Bones showing under tight, jaundiced skin. Poor eyesight, anemic, asthmatic, arthritic, hard of hearing, prone to migraines, and a million of other things that no doctor could explain. Short of cancer or falling victim to a serious virus, it almost seemed as if her body had given up on itself.

            Those pictures had kept Butch up the whole day, his stomach turning every time he’d looked down at his sister’s face.

            She’d been alone for so long, with no one to take care of her, that it was a miracle she’d survived her transition at all. Havers kept mumbling that every time Vishous handed him another hacked medical file and that didn’t inspire any fuzzy feelings in Butch.

            Her story was unlike any of theirs and the more he tried to understand what he was walking into, the harder it became.

            The only thing that offered him comfort as he stepped into her hospital room was that Amanda had blossomed in her transition. There was roundness to the flesh under her cheeks, something that hadn’t been there in the pictures. Her eyes weren’t sunken and haunted, but bright and dark with suspicion, curiosity and no small amount of eagerness to get the hell of out there. There had been some resemblance prior to her transition, but now it was obvious. Her too wide nose, her cat-like brown eyes, the cupid’s bow of her upper lip, the sharpness of her cheekbones and the roundness of her chin. Her whole face angles and ruggedness, a bit masculine in her overly feminine body, but she carried it well.

            She looked a little more like Manny with her deep tan color, like she was used to spending a lot of time in the sun. The eyes were Manny, too. Hers were even darker, some shade short of dark chocolate. Jesus, even the unrelenting black of her hair was Manny-like. Still, Butch wanted to look at her and see something that was his reflected in her face.

            Tucked into some clothes that Fritz had bought for her and some Sox’s slippers he’d bought for her on a whim on her feet, she didn’t look any more vampire than Beth nor any less than Marissa. She was still short for a vampire, only five foot six but at least she no longer weighted ninety-eight pounds soaking wet.

            “I thought the same thing the first time I saw him,” Manny was saying as he stopped a few feet short of the girl. She seized him up, those serious eyes scanning Manny from head to toes. “I’m Manuel. Thank you for meeting with us.”

            The smile she gave Manny was downright mocking. It was something about the way she tipped her head to the side and lifted one eyebrow. “Thank you for giving me a choice.”

            Normally, Butch would have laughed. He liked sarcasm in a person. He didn’t necessarily like it in his own sister.

            Manny chose to ignore that part. “And this is Butch.”

            Her attention came back to him. She seemed to be mentally tasting the word. “Butch.”

            “Brian O’Neil,” he clarified.

            “But your friends call you Butch.”

            “You can, too.”

            Amanda cocked her head to the side again. “You do look like Robert. Everything about your face. You’re even as tall as I remember him being.”

            “I never met him. I never knew what he looked like until Manny came along.”

            Amanda looked between the two of them, her arms coming up to wrap around her body. “So what’s the deal? He abandoned you, too? This is some kind of fairytale story where you find your long lost siblings and you bond over a neglectful father figure?”

            This conversation made him feel awkward and hateful towards the man he’d never even met. “We don’t waste much time talking about shit we can’t control.”

            She chuckled; a warm, beautiful sound that he did like. “I can live with that.”

            “Amanda, do you remember how you got here?” Manny asked.

            She shrugged. “I told Havers and his White Unicorn that I don’t remember anything. I don’t even remember most of the day before. I wasn’t feeling well. I don’t normally feel well period, so it wasn’t that big of a deal. I hadn’t been able to hold anything down in a few days, so I thought maybe I was dehydrated and malnourished. My joints hurt, my stomach was cramping, I kept going through hot flashes and moments I was downright freezing and then everything went black.”

            “Those are common symptoms of a transition. I understand Havers got to you before we did and I wanted to speak to you about what he’d said.” Manny took a seat in rolling stool near her and watched as Amanda did the same at the edge of her bed. They both tilted their heads, watching each other like worthy opponents.

            Butch wanted to sit, too, but mostly he wanted to touch her. He had a driving need to hug her, make sure she was well, and to give her a sense of family she’d probably hadn’t had in years. Except Amanda didn’t look like wanted any one to come anywhere near her. She did a good job of projecting.

            “You know, we’ve just met. You are both very handsome young men. I don’t know anything about you and I don’t expect you to know anything about me, but I’m just gonna say that I can handle the siblings thing. I can process that. And honestly, considering some of the things my body’s been through recently, I can compute your existence here in this room. Something about it just warms the depths of my heart. The people here took really good care of me. That the two of your would come here to meet a total stranger means something to me, but I just can’t. I can’t deal with vampires.”

            There was a pause in which Butch and Manny looked at each other and Amanda simply looked at both of them. The expression on her face was hopeful. Hesitant, but hopeful.

            “It’s real.”

            That hopeful expression went straight down the drain, quickly replaced by annoyance and exasperation.

            “Seriously, what are you people smoking? What’s the drug of choice here? Tell me, so I can help you find the proper counseling.”

            “Medically speaking, vampires are simply the next evolutionary step from _Homo sapiens._ Like regular human beings, they are mammalian, fully capable of rational thought, and prone to the same emotional range. The differences lie in their internal make up. Their endurance, musculature, longevity and immune system far surpasses anything human. I’m still working on categorizing their other advancements. Quite honestly, it’s fascinating.”

            Manny paused.

            Amanda grinned, flashing white teeth. Butch wondered what she’d look like with her fangs out. He’d be a million bucks that she’d be terrorizing. “Are you the smart one in this family?”

            Manny smiled wide. “I’m a doctor.”

            “You also use ‘their’ a lot. As in, you are not one of them.”

            Sharp little sister.

            “I’m not. I didn’t go through a transition the way you did nor I choose to go through a regressive transition. It’s a process through which the recessive genes are activated. I’m still human, although I have my ways of staying young, like the rest of them.”

            “So it’s genetic.”

            “Yes. From what I’ve been able to research, it’s all about the strongest genes. It’s our best guess that Robert was half breed and that the genes he passed on to us have manifested differently in our developments.”

            “What about the bright, diamond-like skin?” There was mockery in her tone.

            Butch wanted to take a bullet to the head.

            “You should, at no time, think to compare the reality over vampires to some shitty teenage fantasy.”

            Amanda laughed. “There has to be downsides. No evolutionary process is perfect. Evolution is not on a singular level, but a group level.”

            “Biologically, the biggest weakness to vampires is their deadly photosensitivity. Then there’s their dependence on the blood of the opposite sex. Finally, females have a considerably higher mortality rate during reproduction than humans do. There are a few hereditary weaknesses displayed in certain groups or lines, but it’s not different than the human species.”

            “You mentioned low birth rates. I imagine, then, that for a human woman, child birth would have been specially hard?”

            That hardness was back in her eyes. His sister, bones of steel and eyes like glaciers, watched Manny like a predator. As smart as she was proving to be, there was something about her demeanor that still struck Butch as childish. She even leaned backwards, her head tilted to the side. She tapped her swinging feet together.

            Almost as if she didn’t want to hear the truth.

            “I’m sorry to say that I have little to no empirical evidence of the survival rate of human females to vampiric children.”

            Amanda’s face gave nothing away as she straightened her spine. “So, three children, with three different women, I go through this transition thing, you don’t, and Brian over here….”

            Butch felt those no-bullshit eyes scanning his face. “I’m vampire.”

            “Right.”

            Her tone was more “Get the fuck out”.

            She thought they were all crazy and she wanted to wake up from this nightmare. It wasn’t just her expressions that Butch found hard to read, but her scent. She was unimpressed by them, but also weary. She didn’t like their presence in her space, but was relieved not to be alone. He’d read everything about her; he’d even been inside of her house and looked through her things and he should by all accounts understand the most basic of her instincts, but he didn’t.

            He knew it was impossible to expect her to see him the same way he saw her. All Butch wanted was to protect her. He wanted her to see the possibilities. He wanted to take her back to the mansion, have Fritz feed her until there was fat under her skin, and then keep her safe with the rest of the females and young.

            He wanted her to give him a chance to understand this brave new world she was a member of.

            He wanted her to believe.

            “I feel well enough to go home. I’d like to go home, now.” She slid off the bed, wrapping her arms around herself as she looked around the room and shrugged. “I appreciate all of this. Nearly every bit of it, but I want to go home.”

            Manny shook his head as he stood up too. He towered over her. “Amanda, we can’t in good conscious let you go back to your house. We haven’t established how strong your genes are. We have no telling how you’ll adapt out—“

            “I’ll adapt. Trust me, I’m adaptable.”

            “You’re vampire, you need to learn the differences between the two. We can help you, Amanda," Manny argued as he blocked the door with his body. 

            Her dark eyes flared like a maelstrom of fire. “I’m human and you’re on a bad trip.”

            Manny opened his mouth to argue but it was obvious from Butch's perspective that there were dealing with some one slightly more difficult to handle than anyone else they'd come up against recently. He had to step in or she was going to push past Manny and she was going to disappear into the night never to be seen again. He had no doubts that she could survive perfectly on her own amongst humans. 

            “You’re our sister, you’re a vampire, we’re at war and you are not stepping foot out of my sight even if have to tie to leg for the rest of eternity. You're coming home with us, Amanda. We're your home now.”

           


End file.
